Donny/Disco Train

Hey, you're a big boy now! Packaged together as part of the 7Ts label's series of Osbros two-fers, Donny Osmond's seventh and eighth albums can either be praised as the first true expressions of what really made the young man tick -- or as sad examples of just how fast and hard the entire Osmond machine was shutting down. Donny is the best of the two, inasmuch as he…
See more details below

Overview

Hey, you're a big boy now! Packaged together as part of the 7Ts label's series of Osbros two-fers, Donny Osmond's seventh and eighth albums can either be praised as the first true expressions of what really made the young man tick -- or as sad examples of just how fast and hard the entire Osmond machine was shutting down. Donny is the best of the two, inasmuch as he is still plucking material from wherever he fancies and giving it no more of a facelift than his vocal arrangement demands. Artistic development across his earlier albums was slow, to say the least; Donny, however, has a maturity that takes him far from the winsome youth who won fans' hearts with "Puppy Love," and there's an ironic edge to the album's sole hit, "Where Did All the Good Times Go," that you did not need hindsight to appreciate. Once, the Osmonds ruled the world. Now they were scrambling to even keep up and, if you really want to know how far they'd fallen, Disco Train should leave you in no doubt. Not, thankfully, as execrable as the brothers' near-simultaneous The Proud One, Disco Train is still the sound of Osmond seeking success wherever he can grab it, from the "look at me, still hip as can be" absurdity of the album's title, through to the indeed discoid stylings that are draped behind songs that he'd once have performed straight. The title track and, later in the cycle, "Disco Dancin'" are the saddest inclusions here, but the album as a whole is a bottomless pit, from which it would take Donny a long time to escape.